MTN 3G/GPRS service going down the tubes

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sbloomer

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And here I was getting excited about the great performance offered by 3G and GPRS on MTN (see some of my other posts)....

Now I sit typing away using my trusty dial-up because my MTN connection AINT WORKING!!! I haven't been a able to do anything from my home in Table View for the last couple of days.... If I'm lucky enough to get a connection, I get mostly timeouts. Last week when I was in Joburg the connection using 3G was usekess and I had to resort to forcing my 6630 to use EDGE.

MTN, what's going on.????
 
The connections is lately troublesome. And today almost useless. The server doesn’t respond for minutes at a time. Have to wait a few minutes before you can get something done before it dies again.
 
Like passing galstones

BloemGuy said:
I experience the same in Bloemfontein ... :(
Click to expand...

I can confirm yet another area with problems (newcastle). Although, as I've said before, the problem appears to be accross the entire network or at the core of it.

Everybody seems to be experiencing it at more or less the same time for the same period.

But what I would like to know is, did vodacom have such teething problems? 'Cause MTN seems to be an old oom trying to pass galstones every afternoon. And it ain't going so smoothly, it would seem. :eek:
 
Back to normal?

Mine was the same (East London) yesterday and the day before but is back up and running nicely now... (Thurs 28th Jun)
 
The problem seems to be the "internet" access point. I had problems again and switched to the “mymtn” access point and service has so far been trouble free.
 
Hi,

All I can say is that it can and will only get better :)

Regards,
 
I really think the call centre service needs an 'upgrade' ....

I got a prepaid SIM card today specifically for data access. The first thing I did was to call and activate data on my phone. After about 10 minutes holding, I got through to the agent. I told him that I had just replaced my previous MTN SIM with a new prepaid SIM, and I needed data activation on the SIM. He told me NOTHING was EVER activated on the SIM, and told me it was the settings. I explained that I HAD THOSE, as it worked with my old MTN SIM. Again, he wanted to send me the settings only. After 10 minutes trying to explain to I didn't need them, I just accepted and decided to try again a few hours.

I have just tried again, and as luck would have it, got through to the same agent that I had earlier. I have the settings sent again, but still no activation.

Am I right in saying I need activation???
 
MTN083 said:
Hi,

All I can say is that it can and will only get better :)

Regards,
Click to expand...
Yes it can, but will it? Judging by the way mtn staff members here dodge... I doubt it.
 
Hi Sig_sis_7

My personal opinion:
!
As this a pubic domain, general MTN staff should not be providing comment as their comment could most likely be a personal opinion or a less informed opinion and not that of MTN.

I think these forums are for constructive feedback/criticism and not finger pointing.
!

Thanks for the feed back
regards
 
Ok, but I've still been waiting 2 months for a response to three mms queries logged on the MTN site.

Ag, nevermind.
Not in the mood to argue MTNs flawed policies of customer service with you.
You obviously have your own opinion and feel righteous about it.
Just see to it whoever needs to learn about dns and routing gets the right training.
 
MTN083 said:
Hi Sig_sis_7

My personal opinion:
!
As this a pubic domain, general MTN staff should not be providing comment as their comment could most likely be a personal opinion or a less informed opinion and not that of MTN.
!

Thanks for the feed back
regards
Click to expand...

Bollocks - MTNHandsets and MTNBroadBand are here and advertise themselves as representing MTN. Therefore while they may put riders on some of what they say, they are the voice of MTN on this forum.

That being said, they used to show themselves regularly and were very helpful, but they haven't been seen since pretty much the same time as my original complaint about 3G/EDGE service deteriorating.
 
Dolby said:
I really think the call centre service needs an 'upgrade' ....

I got a prepaid SIM card today specifically for data access. The first thing I did was to call and activate data on my phone. After about 10 minutes holding, I got through to the agent. I told him that I had just replaced my previous MTN SIM with a new prepaid SIM, and I needed data activation on the SIM. He told me NOTHING was EVER activated on the SIM, and told me it was the settings. I explained that I HAD THOSE, as it worked with my old MTN SIM. Again, he wanted to send me the settings only. After 10 minutes trying to explain to I didn't need them, I just accepted and decided to try again a few hours.

I have just tried again, and as luck would have it, got through to the same agent that I had earlier. I have the settings sent again, but still no activation.

Am I right in saying I need activation???
Click to expand...

If there is a SIM swap on an existing account (eg the new SIM has the same phone number as the old SIM) than the services (such as data) which were provisioned on the account will carry over and do not need to be reprovisioned.

If the prepaid SIM is a new account (new phone number) than the easiest is to put the SIM into a handset, send off the code *123*11# (type in this string then press the send button). This first provisions you for WAP and MMS and then it sends auto-configuration strings to your handset. You can ignore these two SMS's when they come in but you will then be sure that you are provisioned for data.

I hope this helps.
 
sbloomer said:
Bollocks - MTNHandsets and MTNBroadBand are here and advertise themselves as representing MTN. Therefore while they may put riders on some of what they say, they are the voice of MTN on this forum.

That being said, they used to show themselves regularly and were very helpful, but they haven't been seen since pretty much the same time as my original complaint about 3G/EDGE service deteriorating.
Click to expand...

We have people who drive around and test 3G continuously and it seems as though statistically the service is improving. Not only that but our quality is very competitive. Nevertheless we are working on overall quality as well as specific actions.

In general, the more specific the issue (phone number, area, time of day) the easier it is to respond to a query and resolve it.
 
Hi MTNBroadband,

The last person I spoke to told me that - but no one else mentioned that the settings will provision data access. Had I known upfront, I would just have taken the settings and ignored them - like you state.

If I'm correct, at Vodacom you can ask for EITHER the settings OR the data enabled. I assumed MTN would be the same, hence I ended up asking for 'my SIM to be data enabled - but I don't need settings as I have them'.
 
MTNBroadband said:
We have people who drive around and test 3G continuously and it seems as though statistically the service is improving. Not only that but our quality is very competitive. Nevertheless we are working on overall quality as well as specific actions.

In general, the more specific the issue (phone number, area, time of day) the easier it is to respond to a query and resolve it.
Click to expand...

MTNBB, how many of the towers in the Table View area are EDGE enabled? When I try connect from home there only seems to be one which is EDGE-enabled, (according to Netmon) and this isn't the one my phone normally "connects" to, so if I want to use EDGE, I have to force my phone to switch towers. The tower it normally connect to is Table View Ext 12 (channel 111), but I have to force it to use channel 103....

My point is the EDGE coverage is still quite a long way behind GPRS.

Also I would like to say that since my original gripe, things are back to the way they were. I just wish we could get 3G in Table View and also that MTN brings in the "intermediate" packages....
 
APNs & config

While I've been pretty pleased with the GPRS & 3G service I've had so far, I've also had problems and have been learning by trial-and-error.

Most recently, I couldn't get anything to work the other evening -- I'd connect successfully with PPP, but no packets would ever come in. The same config had been working earlier in the day. But at the same time, I could access the web from the browser on my phone (6680).

Then I think I found the problem -- my phone didn't have an APN name set at all for packet data. I put in myMTN as the APN name and things have been fine since. What is wierd, however, is that I had been able to use GPRS and 3G without an APN name (I can see this in my phone logs -- lots of connections to "Packet Data (No Number)." Since adding the APN name, I see "Packet Data: myMTN".

I'm still getting a feel for how the service performs and what factors affect it -- DNS lookup delays, TCP slow start, etc. But the GPRS+ service seems at least as good as dialup, and probably better about 80% of the time. I used 3G for about an hour at Durban Airport this week, and got peak speeds of 360Kbps, and while I didn't do any big downloads, was seeing 200Kbps. It was pretty snappy. At home on GPRS+, I get 40-50Kbps in the evenings. I tried from a coffee shop in Empangeni today where there is s'posed to be EDGE (although I didn't notice Y'ELLO BROADBAND on the cell ID, come to think of it) and it was about the same as the GPRS+ I get at my house in Mtunzini.

The one thing that seems to me would speed up web surfing would be either caching DNS lookups locally (although when I run a caching named on my laptop it seems to go a bit nuts and I shut it down on GPRS) or eliminating them by using an HTTP proxy. Is there an HTTP proxy on the MTN network that can be used? I sometimes use one of my own on our campus network here.

The gut-feel comparison I can make...in May, my stats for dialup use were about 58 hours online, 135MB transferred. Since getting my 6680, I've transferred about 154MB in the last 2 weeks, and I haven't used my old dialup.

...which means I'm going to need a ~250MB bundle -- so please hurry on with new bundle sizes.
 
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